Polaris Securities Co (寶來證券), the nation’s biggest online brokerage firm, filed a missing-persons report with police yesterday after the company lost contact with chairman Wayne Pai (白文正), a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange said.
Pai has not been in contact with either the company or his family since flying to Penghu on Wednesday night, the company’s statement said.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported that Pai was last seen at the Penghu Sea-Crossing Bridge (跨海大橋) near Siyu Township (西嶼鄉).
“Pai is a highly disciplined person, who might have suffered from fatigue and depression recently,” after being investigated following allegations that he had embezzled company money, the statement said.
Recent media speculation that he had paid for an honorary PhD from National Chiao Tung University might have been the final blow as it was a major insult to him, the company’s statement said.
No company spokesperson was available yesterday for further comment.
Financial Supervisory Commission Vice Chairwoman Susan Chang (張秀蓮) yesterday confirmed that Polaris had also reported the incident to the regulator before filing the missing-persons report. Polaris told the commission that it had been trying to reach Pai for quite some time but all attempts had failed, Chang said.
Chang hoped that the public and media would allow Pai some time and space to sort out his problems and urged Pai to contact his company to ease investors’ worries.
“By law, the chairman of a publicly traded company should not just go missing,” she told reporters yesterday.
In mid-May Pai was questioned by prosecutors and released on bail after he denied allegations that he bought shares in the company’s asset-management unit and sold them to the company at an inflated price in 2004.
Local media had speculated that Polaris top executives, including Pai, had pocketed more than NT$500 million by selling the shares in Polaris International Securities Investment Co (寶來投信) back to the brokerage company.
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